


Where the windows breathe in the light

by bluebells



Series: Strangers in Gravity [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Corporate, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-13
Updated: 2012-12-13
Packaged: 2017-11-21 01:06:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/591701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebells/pseuds/bluebells
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three times, he almost dials Michael's number, almost drives to his brother's small mansion to shake him by the shoulders until all that carefully constructed bullshit of cold stares and Armani armour tears away.</p><p>"What the hell is wrong with you?" he wants to shout. "When did you become this abusive asshole? Where the fuck is my brother? What happened to you?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where the windows breathe in the light

**Author's Note:**

> The end of a long road. This story contains discussion of depression, domestic and emotional abuse. Many thanks to ladyknightanka for the sanity check and cleaning up my stray semicolons. <3
> 
> Title is adapted from the Cinematic Orchestra's _That Home_.

It’s six-thirty in the morning when Lucifer pulls up to the curb at the end of the street, just as Adam asked.

Adam is waiting in the shade of the trimmed pine, exactly where he said he would be. He climbs into Lucifer’s truck and shuts the door behind him with a wary glance back up the road.

Adam isn’t carrying a bag, not even a jacket against the morning’s chill.

The suburban cul-de-sac chirps with the song of early birds in the trees. Adam tenses, movement up the street drawing his eye. One of the neighbors wanders down his driveway, a portly man of at least seventy and nothing but a long day of leisure ahead of him.

Adam glances back at Lucifer, blue eyes wide. He blinks away like he wasn’t expecting Lucifer to be watching, maybe to see something he shouldn’t - like the mottle of bruises scraped beneath his ear, clamped around his elbows. Lucifer tries to pick his jaw up off the floor of his truck.

Sometimes, it’s really hard to understand how he and Michael are related.

Adam’s shoulders draw together, making himself small in his seat. “Drive,” he says, by way of good morning.

Lucifer blows out a quiet breath and does as he’s told.

-*-

Adam is shaking and he won't accept the sweater Lucifer offers him, instead tightly clutching a towel as he hovers on the bathroom's threshold.

"Here." Lucifer sighs and lays the spare clothes on the table by the door. "If you change your mind."

Pipes rattle in the roof once the shower starts. Lucifer considers calling Michael. He saw them almost two days ago and he has to wonder what went so wrong that Adam's last resort was to call the brother of the guy he was running from.

He assumes Adam is running since he only had the peace of mind to bring his wallet and phone. Lucifer knew Adam was hurting; he'd seen it that night in his eyes when they sprawled on the floor together, and those bruises....

He thinks about calling Sam. He wonders if he has Dean's number.

Lucifer leaves his cellphone charging by the laptop.

-*-

Adam emerges from the bathroom just in time to stop Lucifer from knocking the door down to check he hasn't drowned.

Adam's hair is still dripping wet. He takes the empty stool by Lucifer at the kitchen counter.

Lucifer hopes his heart isn't thundering as loud as he thinks it is - Adam's all right, he can take care of himself - and pushes the second plate of toast in front of Adam.

"It's cold, but you can reheat it over there." Lucifer gestures and returns to the email he's composing. Work always helps focus him, at least for a short while.

Adam takes his breakfast cold. The dry tear and crunch of hardened toast fills the kitchen, alongside the sliding tap of Lucifer's keyboard.

"Can I call anyone?" Lucifer asks quietly as Adam's brushing the crumbs from his lips.

"No." Adam stiffens, turns to Lucifer on his stool. "But - I could go somewhere else if this is too-"

"It's okay." Lucifer rests his hands on the counter. Makes his decision. "You can stay here. As long as you need."

Adam glances around the kitchen’s sparse microwave, kettle and toaster, the cereal bowl already drying on the dish rack. He fidgets with the hem of his borrowed shirt - varsity jersey from Lucifer's golden years. It doesn’t feel like eighteen years ago.

It feels like much longer as Lucifer watches Adam bite the inside of his cheek, and finds himself at a loss to remember just when Adam joined their lives. He knows it’s been years, but too long crosses his mind when he considers Adam’s real age - how much older, smaller and frailer he looks in this light.

How did they let this happen?

“Where can I get a glass?" Adam asks, and then they’re moving again.

-*-

Lucifer stares at his laptop and struggles to parse out the meaning of the words in front of him. "Are you sure I can't call your brothers?"

"They’re out of town." The pipes creak and bang in the walls as Adam refills the water in his glass.

The morning sun floods in through the window above the sink, harsh and unforgiving. Adam leans heavily against the sink at his hip. Lucifer wonders if he’ll keep that toast down.

Maybe he should stay home from work today.

"Are you leaving him?" Lucifer asks.

Adam settles his empty glass in the sink so carefully, it doesn't make a sound. The skin around his eyes looks bruised when his gaze flits to Lucifer. He rolls his jaw, shakes his head with a shrug like he has no idea, like it's too fucking hard to think about right now and he just -

Lucifer rises from his seat, the stool scraping noisily along the wooden panels. "I'll show you the guest room."

-*-

He thinks twice about leaving Adam alone at his place.

It isn't even because he barely knows Adam, all things considered. Adam may have been Michael's partner for close to five years, but Adam and Lucifer had always been ships passing in the harbour.

It isn't that he doesn't trust leaving Adam alone with his possessions. He worries about leaving Adam alone with himself. Lucifer remembers how suffocating the silence could be, so he made a point of inviting Adam to his library and television before he left. Adam had nodded and followed with a mechanical politeness, not quite managing a smile when Lucifer was leaving for work.

_"Thanks for letting me stay here."_

Lucifer worries that he'll get home at the end of the day and Adam will be gone. Would that be a bad thing?

He sits back in his chair and does his best to pay attention as Ruby briefs him on the day's priorities, but he can't stop looking out the window to the rows and rows of shipping containers on the docks. The grey-blue sea is calm, the skies are clear. It’s a perfect day and it feels like an insult.

He imagines Adam sitting at the bed’s corner in his guest room, soaking up the sun. Forgetting to sleep or move or think, lingering on empty until the sun sets.

Lucifer should really call someone.

Three times, he almost dials Michael's number, almost drives to his brother's small mansion to shake him by the shoulders until all that carefully constructed bullshit of cold stares and Armani armour tears away.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" he wants to shout. "When did you become this abusive asshole? Where the fuck is my brother? What happened to you?"

But he can't ask any of these questions without inviting other enquiries about how he knows and the more precious secret of where Adam had sought haven.

The longer he considers it, the closer he comes to the conclusion of when it started, perhaps even 'why'. He shakes his head. There is no excuse for this. He wonders what it says about his loyalties that he scrolls right past Michael in his address book once Ruby leaves him to his distractions in his office.

He doesn't really care what it says about him.

 _Sam Winchester._ His thumb hovers, mouth twisting.

He drops the cellphone by his keyboard and sighs into his hands. He'll give it a few days.

-*-

Three weeks pass.

Part of himself - a voice that sounds sternly like his doctor, Raphael - argues that he doesn’t have to do this. This isn't his responsibility, and Lucifer is tired. He spends his days worrying what Adam will do, if he has enough to distract himself within the apartment; if Lucifer should actually be compelling him to slow down, to do more, to leave the apartment, to see people.

He asks once more if Adam wants to be put in touch with his brothers.

Adam looks up briefly from the growing pile of books beside him at Lucifer's coffee table. His expression is one of its rare moments of unguarded ease. His eyes wash over his host, and Adam forgets to enforce that unspoken wall he's been so careful to hold since he walked out of Lucifer's shower with his wet hair in his eyes, looking lost in Lucifer's kitchen.

"If you ever wanted to get in touch with your brothers, invite them here. I could give you some space," Lucifer says, glancing to the four small walls of his living room and its shelves of literature.

Adam's already read the wealth of one wall by this point.

He glances to the lily on the stand by the short hall leading to the bedroom, the gated window extending to the lip of the balcony. "Thanks. I'll think about it."

"Have you told them?"

Adam shrugs rather than shaking his head. "I don't know what I’d say."

Lucifer's mug of coffee is growing cold in his hand. Unlike Adam, coffee is the only thing that helps him sleep. "It's okay. Not knowing right away."

Adam lowers the book in his lap. The lamp light is dim. Lucifer should replace that bulb. "Did you have problems falling asleep?"

"Still do," Lucifer says, and Adam looks up at him sharply, straightening in his seat. His lips part, but he stops and swallows, reconsidering.

"I... sometimes I just lie in bed. I try to sleep, but then I realise I've been lying there for a while. And I'm still awake. I try to relax. I just can't stop thinking, I feel everything turning over in my head, but... there's this buzz and... it's just white noise. Like my head is so full and empty at the same time."

Lucifer smiles weakly. It's a unique experience, not one easy to forget. "Yeah. And it sneaks up on you."

Adam thumbs the corner of his page. "It takes me hours to read a chapter because I read the same lines over and over."

"And you don't absorb a word, so you forget them a minute later. Start again."

Adam barks a laugh, his eyes shining with sudden tears of surprise that Lucifer gets it. "I get so angry at myself, and... I lose hours staring at the same page... and other times it's like the minutes are crawling."

Lucifer looks into the half-drained contents of his mug. The coffee is cold. "For a while after Sam left, I didn't trust myself to drive. People say you can't sleep, you can't eat, you can't even see straight - but it's a focus problem. I couldn't focus on the road long enough to see what was going on around me. There were pedestrians, but I couldn't understand what I was seeing."

Adam shakes his head in disbelief. "What is fucking _wrong_ with us?"

Lucifer's read about it. He knows exactly what those symptoms mean, but Adam probably needs more than a label right now. "I think that's what trauma feels like when you don't even know you're going through it. I felt awful or empty. Nothing in between."

Adam stares at him for a long time, book splayed in his lap. “Does he know I’m here?”

The cellphone is heavy in Lucifer's pocket. _What the hell is wrong with you? What the fuck happened to my brother?_ The questions have burned his tongue, building like a scream in his chest. His vision blurred with tears one afternoon watching the containers pass in the shipyard, their towers mounting outside his window.

All he could think about was Sam. _What happened to you?_ he wants to ask, but in his mind's eye he's pacing the bases of a baseball pitch between Sam, Michael and Adam. They stare ahead, expressions empty, and Lucifer wants to tear the hair from his scalp because they're looking right through each other and none of them can agree on the rules.

_What happened to us?_

He's wanted so many times to call his brother, make him stand in the firing range of his ire, but the time still isn't right.

Lucifer shakes his head. “No.”

Adam glances to the window. “But he’s-”

“He’s just my brother.”

Right now Lucifer has more in common with Adam than his own blood. Shame they couldn’t have bonded under different circumstances.

Adam leaves his book on the coffee table and retires to the guest room. They both forget to say 'good night'.

-*-

Lucifer is taking the last bite of his toast at breakfast a few days later when Adam quietly lays his spoon against the lip of his cereal bowl.

He's watching Lucifer when the other man looks up. Lucifer sets down his breakfast and mentally braces himself for the storm building in Adam's gaze, weary and heavy. Lucifer recognises a conversation already in train.

"I'm tired of feeling like this," Adam says quietly.

Lucifer hesitates, reaches across the table. Adam doesn't pull away when Lucifer squeezes his hand.

It’s a Friday and Lucifer doesn't finish work until the clock is creeping towards nine o'clock.

He comes home to a dark house. Pulling his truck into the driveway, his mouth dries when he can't spot a single lit window. It's too early for Adam to be asleep. Adam never hit that wall that stopped him from leaving his (borrowed) bedroom. Lucifer's been too grateful to second-guess how well Adam appeared to be coping in contrast to Lucifer’s own hazy, sometimes missing, memories of the months after Sam left him.

He forgets to lock the car, rushing through the front door. Adam had never said much about what he was feeling until that morning, and Lucifer, irrationally, fears the worst, the unmentionable and horrifying. He wishes he'd spoken to Adam to understand his thresholds, to make sure Adam would never - that he'd never consider -

Adam is sitting cross-legged on the short lip of the balcony when Lucifer searches the apartment. Lucifer sags with relief, allowing himself a moment to push a hand against the ratchet of his heartbeat seeing Adam safe and quiet, eyes on the moon in the blue, blue night.

He looks peaceful for the first time since staggering through Lucifer’s front door.

"Did you have a good day?" Adam asks when Lucifer slouches beside him at the open window, the balcony too short to fit them both.

"All right. How about you?" Lucifer asks, shifting against the chipped white paint.

Adam shrugs, tapping an irregular beat on his folded knees. "I'm leaving Michael."

Lucifer goes still, tries not to stare at Adam's profile as the younger man leans back on the opposite window frame. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah."

"Are you really sure, or --"

"I'm leaving."

Lucifer waits, waits until Adam looks back at him with a smile that trembles with _thank you_ all the same, and Lucifer nods.

"Okay."

-*-

He hears Adam speaking to someone on the phone when passing his bedroom late at night. The low, calm murmur of his voice makes Lucifer turn his head, hovering at the entry to his own room.

He’s glad Adam’s finally talking to someone.

-*-

“Um, so, would it be okay if Sam came here tonight?” Adam asks the next day at breakfast. He’s standing on the balcony again and Lucifer doesn’t know why he never considered opening it during the daytime. It’s a good idea. “He’s back in town this afternoon and... we’re going to figure out what to do next. How to get my stuff out of there. If Michael hasn’t trashed it.”

Lucifer frowns over his laptop. “If he gives you any trouble, let me know. I could be there to help when you move.”

If that would be helpful.

Adam swallows, mouth shrugging like he’ll think about it. “So, is it okay? If Sam comes here?”

It’s funny, the cold pinch under Lucifer’s lungs. He hoped that keeping occupied with Adam would make him think less about Sam. Sometimes, it did. Other times Adam would crack this brief, rueful smile and Lucifer would remember the same look in Sam’s eyes. They had the same nose, same mouth.

_See, Sam? See what I’d do for your family?_

But that’s selfish and Lucifer has struggled every day to be compassionate instead of proud.

“Of course. I can give you both some space. I’ll be home late.”

Adam smiles, the lines of his mouth relaxing. “Thanks. You know, you’ve really helped me. I don’t know what I would have done if you weren’t here.”

Lucifer thinks of dim bars with sticky floors; taxis that smelled like beer, grease and piss; waking up in unfamiliar hotels with mould caked into the walls and little idea of how he’d got there or if he’d been missing long enough that someone had put him into involuntary retirement.

No idea what day it was, where he was, why he was there. Not even caring.

Pride or compassion: it’s easier to make the call when you’ve been facedown in the dirt and remember which quality might have helped you.

“You’re welcome.”

-*-

Lucifer stays late at work that evening, buys dinner at one of the few cafes still open at ten o’clock, and takes his car down to the lake. He parks on the darker side of the pavillion where the trees are tall and every second lamp is busted.

He finds a bench between two such posts where the shadows drape across his shoulders. He watches the half moon ripple across the black water.

The cool, summer breeze licks across his lips like an overdue welcome. The overpass is a distant arc of light across the water. The hush in the air settles deep in his bones, and Lucifer releases a long, heavy exhale.

By night, this place seems secluded, intimate, but he doesn't feel alone. He feels abruptly at home. Two feelings wash over him at once: a quiet peace and immeasurable sadness, so thick and sudden that he swallows repeatedly to keep it from gasping out.

They can't go on like this. He doesn't care what time it is.

The wind is whistling in his ear, and Michael picks up on the fifth ring. "Lucifer?"

He sounds surprised, like he doesn't have caller ID, like it's been that long between conversations that he's forgotten how to carry a conversation with his brother, or that family means having leave to call at any hour of the day.

He wonders why Michael didn't call him after Adam left.

"Why didn't we fight harder for them?" Lucifer asks quietly. "Why didn't we do it right?"

Silence answers him from the other end of the line. Maybe Michael's searching for a short and sharp way to politely hang up.

"And why the hell didn't you come to me after Dad died? It was sudden, and we both said we were fine, but - who the fuck were we kidding? Not Sam - he left because I refused to get my shit together. I was going to marry him, Mike, and you and Adam...." Lucifer sighs, lowering his voice.

He watches a slow stream of cars sail across the bridge, their headlights blinking between the rails.

Michael's voice is quieter than Lucifer expects. "I fucked up, didn't I?"

It isn't what Lucifer expects at all. Maybe Michael's been thinking about some things these past few weeks, after all.

It robs the last wind from the sails of Lucifer's self-righteous anger. He wants to ask if Michael knows that Adam's a closet alcoholic, if he realises that abuse starts so much earlier than hurling glass vases and physically striking the person you'd sworn to protect. But something in Michael's voice stops him, sick with pity. In that moment, he wants to reach through the phone and punch his brother, crush him in a hug, make him better and resolve his sins for the world.

"Yeah. Shit, Mike, you promised his mom that Christmas that you'd take care of him."

Michael makes a short noise of assent, and Lucifer imagines him sitting by the sole lamp at his study, worrying a fountain pen between his fingers, an island in the dark. Lucifer takes comfort from the fact Michael isn't talking over him.

"We both said we were busy - I was grateful for the distraction after we had to put Dad in the ground - but I should've given you more credit. I could have talked to you more."

Michael grunts, and it sounds like a shrug. "You said it: we were busy."

"But I'm listening now, whenever you want," Lucifer says. "You don't want to hear it, but I'm not going anywhere."

It takes a while for Michael to reply. Lucifer tucks his coat closer around himself. The temperature's dropped.

"Yeah. We could talk." And it sounds like an invitation, a plea, a guilty admission of so much more.

Lucifer nods, fingers curling tighter around the cellphone. "I'm listening."

Another beat of silence. He hears this strange noise he first thinks is interference, but then realises it's Michael's shuddering breath, a wrenching, horrible sound Lucifer hasn't heard since the doctors turned off the machine to their dad's life support. His eyes sting in sympathy.

Sitting forward on the bench, he cradles both hands around the phone as though Michael can feel the reassurance through the call, imagine it as an arm around his shoulders.

"I'm listening."

"So. I screwed up."

-*-

Lucifer spends the entire night by the lake speaking to Michael until his phone beeps at him, low on battery, but it's okay. By that point, sunrise is only an hour away.

Michael tells him everything. Lucifer is so relieved that Michael's account lines up with Adam's side of events, but it's enlightening to hear it from the other side. Like how Michael knew there was something wrong, was pretty sure the problem was with him, but was dick all inclined to do anything besides push Adam as quickly and unapologetically out of the line of fire. Out of his room, out of his life, no explanations, because that meant trying to acknowledge there was a problem in the first place, and - no.

If you pretend you don't care about someone for long enough, you start believing it. It backfired spectacularly, because you can't push someone away when you're desperately clinging to them with your other hand.

Lucifer thinks about Adam's bruises, the dark circles under his eyes, those long nights on the balcony searching the night just so Lucifer wouldn't have to see him cry. For the first time, Lucifer is grateful that Sam left him before Lucifer could hurt him worse than he already did. He doesn't think he could hurt Sam like that, but once upon a time, he would have said the same of Michael.

Lucifer is indignantly furious on Adam's behalf. He is saddened with shame for Michael. He closes his eyes and lets their poison wash through him, opens his eyes and forces himself to release it like a second skin, shuddering free on the wind.

"So, what do I do now?" Michael's voice is weary and scratched. He could probably use some water. They could both use some sleep.

Neither of them suggested it once over the last four hours. Lucifer had no idea the battery on his phone would last this long.

"I don't know," Lucifer says. "But you have to acknowledge what you did. Apologise. You've been making all the decisions for both of you the last few months. Now, he gets to choose."

"Fuck." Michael barks a laugh, bitter. "I'd leave me."

Adam had already left. Now it was just a question of if he'd go back. Lucifer doesn't weigh in his opinion, that's not his purpose in this conversation anymore.

"You still got me," Lucifer says.

Michael clears his throat. "So, I'm going to try and catch some sleep before my nine a-m. Do you want to come over tonight? If you're not busy."

Lucifer nods, ears perking up as the first bird sings out in the trees above his head. "I'll be there."

"Okay... I'm glad you called, Luci."

"Me, too. Thanks."

-*-

Adam leaves with Sam that morning.

Lucifer recognises Sam's grey truck pulling out of his driveway, the sight of it is startling. He doesn't think they see him rounding the corner onto the street. The sky is turning blue with the first light of morning, the rest of the neighbourhood still asleep.

Lucifer finds a note from Adam on the kitchen counter: _Thanks. I owe you._

Lucifer thinks of Sam's wounded miscomprehension before he left with little more than his own note, and that gratitude kicks him swiftly in the gut again.

 _Run,_ he thinks, dropping his keys on the counter. _You don't owe us anything._

Later, when he's showered and his phone has recharged, his stomach back-flips finding a text from Sam.

_Thanks for looking after Adam,_ is all it says, but it balms a rawness he's been nursing for so long, leaving a smile on his face.

It isn't better, it won't happen overnight, but he hopes time will work its magic and they'll all get to where they're supposed to be.

-*-

**Epilogue**

The world turns and the tides run to another time, another place.

They're four brothers waiting to cross on opposite sides of the busy street at high noon. The day is hot and leaves them squinting, but their eyes still lock across the noisy flood of traffic. A flicker of doubt, the shorter blond turns to his elder brother, who is busy studying his cellphone; "Do you know those guys, Sam?"

Sam blinks, raising his head and follows the direction of Adam's nod. The tall blond man in a grey suit stands in the shade of the traffic light, and he's smiling right at Sam, bright and amused. Sam stops and stares. There's _something_ familiar about him, but - Sam shakes his head, watching a dark-haired man in a marine's uniform lean close to murmur in the blonde's ear, large duffel tucked against his side.

 _Coming or going?_ he wonders idly.

"No," Sam says, reading the new message on his phone. "Really? The one time we're running late and Dean's already at the diner."

"You sure?" Adam's voice piques dubiously, playful, eyes still on their observers across the street. "They're kinda hot. Actually, they're _really_ hot, you could just pretend you met them at one of your firm's mixers-"

Sam doesn't look up from his keypad. "Picking up random strangers off the street, what would your mom say?"

A car horn blares down the road, the pedestrian light changes and a fresh crowd breaks onto the street.

Adam glances away first, and the moment is broken. "Come on, the light's green, I'm gonna get that blond's number for you."

Sam catches his brother's arm just as Adam takes off like a shot. "Hey hey hey, Dean's waiting. And don't look now, but I think the brunet's checking you out."

"Oh, I'm looking." The smug grin is clear in Adam's voice.

Sam growls at his phone. "We're in the middle of the city, how could I possibly have no signal?"

Adam nudges him in the arm, eyes steady on his brother as they weave through the hurrying pedestrians. "The diner's five minutes away, don't worry. Unless you're going to grab that guy's number, put your phone away. New love of your life, Sammy, passing in three... two...."

Sam rolls his eyes, but Adam isn't looking at him anymore, half a step behind. Sam does not miss the significantly appreciative once-over Adam exchanges with the marine, the other man's mouth curving in a slow smirk. They smile, almost brush shoulders, a courteous nod of greeting. They don't pause, they don't stop and stare and pull each other aside. Sam's grateful - they're already running late.

He almost misses the other man entirely. He catches the last glimpse of that grey suit when it passes him. A strange and unexpected feeling kicks Sam in the gut, but he isn't naive enough to entertain it. The blond smiles at Sam over his shoulder, then turns his eyes ahead, falling back in step with his friend.

Reaching the opposite curb, Sam raises an eyebrow at Adam's stunned expression, the hand pressed to his stomach like the wind's been knocked from him.

"I think I just got pregnant," Adam says, his expression cracking into a smile; he laughs when Sam can't hold in his own grin.

"Double bacon, then? You're eating for two now," Sam jibes, seeing the diner's sign up ahead. 

"Definitely," Adam says. "That was fun."

Sam spares a glance across the street, but the two men have disappeared into the crowd. 

They're just four strangers passing in the street who will never miss what they'll never know.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Where the doors are moaning all day long_  
>  _Where the stairs are leaning dusk to dawn_  
>  _Where the windows are breathing in the light_  
>  _Where the rooms are a collection of our lives_  
>  "That Home," the Cinematic Orchestra


End file.
